5 Minute Biographies
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5 Minute Biographies
Each week, we aim to bring you interesting information about interesting people in the form of short, compact biographies, which can be read on our website or listened to as a podcast episode. We hope you enjoy them.
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311 Episoden
Whitney Houston
Whitney Houston rose from a gospel choir in Newark to become one of the most successful and influential singers in popular music. Her extraordinary vo...
Tony Stark
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Tony Stark, the brilliant inventor, industrialist and hero whose name became insepar...
Ellen Ripley
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Ellen Ripley, the warrant officer whose ordinary commercial voyage aboard the Nostro...
Hannibal Lecter
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Hannibal Lecter, the fictional psychiatrist and killer created by Thomas Harris, as...
Michael Corleone
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Michael Corleone, the fictional character at the centre of The Godfather saga, as th...
Victor Frankenstein
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Victor Frankenstein, the fictional scientist at the centre of Mary Shelley's Franken...
Hermione Granger
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Hermione Granger, the fictional witch from J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, as th...
Indiana Jones
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Indiana Jones, the fictional archaeologist and adventurer, as though he were a real...
Diana Prince
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Diana Prince, the fictional Amazon princess better known as Wonder Woman, as though...
Katniss Everdeen
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Katniss Everdeen, the fictional heroine of Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games, as th...
Jay Gatsby
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we tell the life story of Jay Gatsby, the fictional millionaire at the centre of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Gre...
Heath Ledger
Heath Ledger's career lasted barely more than a decade, yet it produced some of the most memorable performances of his generation. From his childhood...
Aretha Franklin
Aretha Franklin possessed one of the most powerful and expressive voices in popular music, but her life away from the microphone was every bit as comp...
Dame Maggie Smith
Dame Maggie Smith's career stretched from post-war repertory theatre to the National Theatre, Oscar-winning cinema, Harry Potter and Downton Abbey. In...
Steve Jobs
In this episode of Compact Biographies, we follow Jobs from his early friendship with Steve Wozniak and the birth of Apple, through the triumph and tu...
Pelé
Pelé was more than a footballer. Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento in Brazil in 1940, he became a global sporting icon before adulthood, won three Worl...
John Hughes
John Hughes helped define the sound, style and emotional texture of 1980s American cinema. From Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club to Ferris Buell...
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a lawyer, judge, Supreme Court Justice, and one of the most influential legal minds in modern American history. From her early...
Enzo Ferrari
Enzo Ferrari built far more than fast cars. He created a racing empire, a global luxury brand and one of the most recognisable symbols in motoring his...
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington was more than a jazz bandleader. He was a composer, pianist, arranger, cultural icon, and one of the great architects of twentieth-cent...
Arthur Ashe
Arthur Ashe was more than a Wimbledon champion. Born in segregated Richmond, Virginia, he became one of the most important figures in tennis history,...
Leif Erikson
Leif Erikson was born into a world of ships, sagas, exile and ambition. Son of Erik the Red, raised on the harsh frontier of Greenland, he became one...
Jim Lovell
Jim Lovell never walked on the Moon, but his place in space history is beyond question. From naval aviation and the Gemini programme to the first huma...
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman was one of the most original physicists of the twentieth century, a Nobel Prize winner whose work helped transform quantum electrodyna...
Thurgood Marshall
Thurgood Marshall was not just a brilliant lawyer. He was one of the most important figures in the history of civil rights in the United States. In th...
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace was one of the great scientific minds of the nineteenth century, yet he is often remembered as the man standing just outside Dar...
Sidney Poitier
Born in Miami in 1927 and raised in The Bahamas, Sidney Poitier went from a difficult early life and odd jobs in New York to become one of the most im...
Mary Anning
Mary Anning was one of the most important fossil hunters in history. Working along the cliffs of Lyme Regis in the early nineteenth century, she uncov...
Scott Joplin
Scott Joplin, often called the King of Ragtime, transformed American music with compositions that blended African American musical traditions with cla...
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most radical and influential thinkers of the eighteenth century, long before the word feminism even existed. Born i...
Tina Turner
Tina Turner was born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939 in Brownsville, Tennessee, and went on to become one of the most commanding performers in mo...
Dorothy Hodgkin
Dorothy Hodgkin changed science by learning how to see what others could not. Born on 12 May 1910, she became a pioneer of X-ray crystallography, reve...
Captain Kidd
William Kidd sailed under a legal commission on 11 December 1695, tasked with hunting pirates in the Indian Ocean. Within six years, he would be hange...
Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman arrived on screen with rare authority, a presence shaped by theatre, discipline, and a refusal to rush. From his film debut as Hans Grube...
Ramanujan
Srinivasa Ramanujan was born on 22 December 1887 in Erode, India, and produced mathematics so original that it baffled experts across continents. Work...
Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot became an international sensation on 2 December 1956 with And God Created Woman, a film that reshaped cinema, celebrity, and modern fe...
Sally Ride
Sally Ride became a symbol of possibility on 18 June 1983, when she flew aboard Space Shuttle Challenger as the first American woman in space. But her...
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
He fought injustice with faith, humour, and an unshakeable belief in human dignity. In this episode of Compact Biographies, we explore the life and le...
Jane Goodall
She changed science by watching quietly, and she changed the world by speaking bravely. In this episode of Compact Biographies, we explore the life an...
The Black Prince
Feared on the battlefield and celebrated as the ideal knight, the Black Prince was England's greatest warrior heir. In this episode of Compact Biograp...